It appears that a couple of new Kaveri APUs are on the way, but don’t expect any miracles.

According to a Japanese site, AMD will release the new parts on May 28th, and the fastest of the lot will be the A10-7870K. This part is clocked at 3.9GHz stock and 4.1GHz Turbo, and boasts R7 graphics with 512 shaders (still no word on GPU clocks though).

As for the rest of the Kaveri line, it’s unclear whether we will see a lot of changes. The new A10-7870K should sell for about $140, which will make it marginally more expensive than the A10-7850K and A10-7800.

It’s quite possible that this is not the official price and that the new part will dethrone the A10-7850K, in which case the rest of the Kaveri line-up should be in line for some price cuts. However, we still cannot confirm this.

The new AMD Athlon X4 840 is all about value and should make the transition to FM2+ cheaper, provided you don’t need integrated graphics.

The chip is a Kaveri-based quad-core clocked at 3.1GHz. It has a max Turbo clock of 3.8GHz and a TDP of 65W. This is only the second Kaveri Athlon to launch – and unlike the Athlon X4 860K, it’s not an unlocked part. It is also somewhat slower than the 860K, which clocks in at 3.7GHz (4.0GHz Turbo), but the 860K is a 95W chip.

A couple of British retailers have listed the chip and KSN claims to have it in stock, ready to ship. Oddly enough, the Athlon X4 840 was announced six months ago, but never found its way to retail.

The only problem we have with the 840 is that it doesn’t appear to be much cheaper than the unlocked 860K, but then again it’s not widely available yet, so we don’t know exact price. British retailers are pricing it at 50 GBP.

AMD will officially start to sell its A8-7650K on the 20 February, 2015. In Japan, where prices are traditionally a bit higher than in the rest of the world, the APU will cost $117.

The new chip is slower than the company's A8-7700K, which AMD discontinued late last year. That said, it is not completely clear why the company decided to replace an APU with a product with lower performance and did not just drop the price of the A8-7700K.

Later this year AMD plans to release a family of A-series APUs known as "Kaveri Refresh" and "Godovari" which will have higher clock-rates.

A new Kaveri desktop SKU has tipped up in the European channel and the A8-7650K appears to offer good value for money.

The quad-core A8-7650K Black Edition is clocked at 3.3GHz, just 100MHz short of the A10-7700K, which costs 10-15% more. The Turbo clock is 3.7GHz, once again 100MHz less than the A10-7700K. We’re not sure 100MHz more are worth the trouble, although the price difference isn’t that big. You can check out a few early listings in Austria.

In case you were wondering, the GPU spec is identical too, so you get 384 shaders clocked at 720MHz, and capable of pumping out 553GFLOPS. If this is not enough, you can invest in a discrete Radeon R5 for some Dual Graphics Crossfire fun, which should be enough to run most games in 1080p with plenty of eye candy.

Our only problem with AMD’s Black Edition parts is the TDP. At 95W it is relatively high given the spec, but then again if this is a concern AMD has a number of 45W/65W parts with slightly lower clocks and less powerful GPUs.

We have reported that Kaveri gets a desktop refresh but apparently due to ambient noise at the noisy CES, we didn’t catch the right name.

The processor codename is Godavari, again a river in India. In case you didn’t know Kaveri is also a river in India.

The new desktop refresh according to SweClockers is going to end up with A10-8850K branding. The new processor will get a 100MHz faster turbo clock and is based on the same 28nm manufacturing process. The base CPU clock for the A10-8850K is 3.7GHz, the same speed as the AMD A10-7850K, but the Turbo clock will jump to 4.1GHz with the new one. The A10-7850K has 4.0 GHz top turbo clock and 720 MHz GPU speed for its GCN Sea Island GPU.

The new A10-8850K will get the GPU to 856MHz. The memory speed supported stays at 2133MHz and the socket of choice remains FM2+. The TDP stays at 95W.

As you can see this is a small evolution and you can expect some cool parts for AMD on the desktop side in the latter part of 2016, some eighteen months from now, in 14nm.

We have learned yet another thing about AMD in 2015. The publicly discussed the Carrizo APU that is coming to All-in-Ones and notebooks in the second half of 2015, but many punters have been wondering what is happening on the desktop front.

A new processor, called Kaveri refresh, is (un)surprisingly a 28nm refresh of Kaveri. It will probably hit some higher speeds, but we don’t expect any miracles when it comes to performance. This part will have a tough time fighting Intel's recent Core i5, Core i3 Haswell refresh desktop offerings, but it helps that Broadwell won’t be making its way to desktop. Intel still plans Skylake desktop parts before the end of the year, which will put more pressure on AMD’s 28 nm part.

AMD will play the price card, as the company will offer really affordable prices on Kaveri refresh processors. Since we already wrote that 20nm won’t happen for GPUs, you can draw your own conclusions, as it seems 20nm is not viable for high performance CPUs either. AMD will have Nolan in 20nm, but this is a low TDP part that kind of makes sense to manufacture in 20nm and probably fights Intel SoCs, as well as Tegra X1 and Snapdragon 810 in terms of performance.

The 50+ Watt parts won’t be coming in 20nm and AMD will have to wait for 14nm FinFET technology from GlobalFoundries and Samsung, with a 2016 launch timeframe.

AMD’s Kaveri is not that easy to find in laptops, but it is available in some quite nice machines. One of them is Acer Aspire E5-551G-T4SE, a 15.6-incher with a 1920x1080 non-glare panel, with 8GB of RAM, 1TB HDD and of course AMD’s A10 7300 Kaveri processor. This particular SKU sells for €599.

The A10 7300 has four CPU cores and all work at 1.9GHz base, but with the help of Turbo Core they can hit 3.2GHz. It is based on the Kaveri 28nm architecture and has 4MB cache. The TDP stands at 19W TDP. The Acer Aspire E5 also features R7 M265 Mars based discrete graphics to boost performance on its full HD display and the hardware suggests you’ll be able to enjoy a quite a few games. There are some similar SKUs with the same CPU, but with a 1366x768 screen and a few other penny pinching components.

The Acer Aspire E5-551G-T4SE has one USB 3.0 port, 2x USB 2.0, Gb LAN, 802.11n WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, 5-in-1 card reader, 0.9-megapixel camera and comes with 5000mAh six-cell battery. This should be enough for 7 hours of battery life, which is not bad for a relatively powerful 2.5kg machine with Windows 8.1 64-bit.

This is definitely not the thinnest of lightest laptop out there, but it packs a lot of technology at a reasonable price and serve as a cost-effective desktop replacement for many users.

AMD is slashing prices on its A-series APU products and the cut affects new Kaveri parts along with old Richland and even Trinity generation chips.

While we welcome every price cut, we are somewhat puzzled by some prices.

Eating into the AM1 market

Starting with old Richland and Trinity parts, AMD is cutting prices by 10 to 20 percent. The A10-6800K should now retail at $112, down from $139, while the A8-6600K dropped from $99 to $92. The cheap A4-6400 is now even cheaper, as it went from $47 to just $34. The A4-5300 will sell for $31, while the A4-4400 will go for $27.

The A6-7400K, the cheapest Kaveri with two cores clocked at 3.5/3.9GHz, had its price slashed from $85 to $58, making it a steal.

These price cuts are interesting as they put a few Trinity and Richland parts in AM1 territory in terms of pricing. The A8-7400K isn't far off, either. AMD's AM1 platform is still the cheapest socketed platform offered by the company. Since AM1 boards are basically vessels for Kabini SoCs, they are much cheaper than FM2 and FM2+ boards.

Kaveri gets 20% price cut

The flagship A10-7850K is now priced at $143, down from $179. At $133 and $123 you'll find the A10-7800 and A10-7700K, previously priced at $164 and $159 respectively.

As far as 45W parts go, the A8-7600 is now priced at $92, down from $109. We had a chance to review the 7600 earlier this year and it should be noted that the chip was supposed to retail at $119 when we reviewed it. We already mentioned the dual-core A8-7400K, which now sells for $58.

There is still no word on Athlon price cuts, but needless to say they are expected to tumble as well. We found the Kaveri-based Athlon X4 860K listed at €65 in Europe, down from €77 last week.

We were unable to find any evidence of price cuts on Richland and Trinity based Athlons at this point.

AMD has finally launched three 45W Kaveri SKUs, which were in the works for months. The three chips feature configurable TDP, which means they can run at 45W or they can be pushed to 65W. The TDP can be adjusted by the user with relative ease.

The A8-7600 was the first 45W/65W Kaveri to be announced, but it took AMD almost six months to actually bring it to market. We had a chance to review the A8-7600 and we found it to be a relatively good deal. In the meantime AMD has slashed the list price to $105 a pop, which means it delivers even more value. It is a quad-core part clocked at 3.1/3.8GHz and it features Radeon R7 graphics with 384 shaders clocked at up to 720MHz.

The A10-7800 is a quad clocked at 3.5GHz and it can hit 3.9GHz on Turbo. It has slightly beefier graphics, an R7 with 512 shaders clocked at 720MHz. However, at $155 it's quite a bit more expensive.

The A6-7400K is the only dual-core in the mix. It is priced at $77. Its base clock is 3.5GHz and it can reach 3.9GHz with Turbo Core. It sports Radeon R5 graphics with 256 shaders clocked at 756MHz. It's a K-series part with an unlocked multiplier.

The new chips are still not widely available, but we managed to find all three of them in stock in Europe.

In order to put a bit more pressure on Intel's Core i3 Haswell lineup, AMD has now officially introduced the newest A10-7800 FM2+ socket APU which will be based on 28nm Kaveri architecture.

Featuring four Steamroller CPU cores, the A10-7800 does not feature an unlocked CPU base clock multiplier like the A10-7850K APU but does come with a slightly lower 65W TDP. It packs 4MB of L2 cache, works at 3.5GHz base and 3.9GHz TurboCore CPU clocks and features Radeon R7 series GPU with 512 GCN2 cores and 720MHz base clock.

The A10-7800 is a part of the second batch of AMD Kaveri APUs, which also includes the A4-7300 and the A6-7400K, which has recently showed up for pre-order. This lineup follows the A10-7850K, A10-7700K and the A8-7600 Kaveri APUs which were officially launched back in January this year.

The rest of the specs include integrated dual-channel memory controller with support for DDR3-2133 memory and PCI-Express 3.0 root complex.

While it still has to be listed in Europe, the A10-7800 should have a retail/e-tail price of around US $150.